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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
At almost two and one-half hours in length, this movie is easily one-half an hour too long and the ending should have
been much darker and more intellectual in keeping with what must have been Kubrick's original concept. "A.I.", while
severely flawed, is a must-see movie due to the fact that it is a one-of-a-kind production.
There will never be another Spielberg-Kubrick collaboration and this movie is special for that reason alone. Where it
succeeds, it succeeds wildly, and where it fails, it fails miserably. Credit must at least be given for an ambitious effort
that is still worthwhile given the alternative of mindless action flicks so common during the summer season.
Almost two decades before Stanley Kubrick's death, he had purchased the movie rights to a 1969 short story by Brian Aldiss,
titled "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," from which he had hoped to make a movie following up on the themes he had
so brilliantly developed in "2001: A Space Odyssey". He realized at the time, however, that the computer animation
techniques necessary to make the movie he envisioned were not yet up to his exacting standards so his story boards and the
script for this movie were set aside for many years.
In Steven Spielberg Kubrick recognized a fellow visionary who would be able to bring this dream to fruition so he spent
much of the last decade before his recent death collaborating with Spielberg in the furtherance of this cinematic project.
Spielberg gives Kubrick shared honors in production while he himself has written and directed this movie, his first writing
effort, I believe, since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
"A.I." is divided into three very clear acts with sharp breaks in tone, mood, light, color, and temperament
between them. The first act seems to me to be the best possible collaborative effort between Kubrick and Spielberg. The second
act of the movie is pure Kubrickian while the third act of the movie is a purely sentimental, but equally adventurous, Spielberg
trying to throw a little dab of his "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" ending into the story line.
The question is how does "A.I." rate as a movie developed with the input of these two giants? My answer as something
of a neophyte in these matters would be not too well, but the fault surely lies more squarely with Spielberg in trying to
jigger an audience-pleasing, emotionally satisfying ending out a story that has at its core a cool intellectual heart, if
you can call it that.
To get to where he wanted to go involved his forcing an overly long pseudo-weepy ending onto an originally very powerful
story line that should have had a much sharper edge in its resolution. Furthermore, the music during the third act alternated
between choral, quasi-religious, and a pedestrian elevator style that eventually started to distract me from the movie.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
At some point in the distant future the polar ice caps have melted and all the low-lying seacoast cities have been flooded,
including our own New York City. Much of the world exists in poverty, but the Americans have salvaged what little prosperity
is left through the artful use of "mecha" robots (from "mechanical"), who help their human owners (Orgas",
from "Organic") in all sorts of endeavors. Much of this prosperity has also do to a very low birthrate that is
either enforced or due to environmental problems.
Professor Hobby (William Hurt), as head of robot manufacturing company, has hit upon the idea of trying to create a robot
who can feel and love as well as needing love for those many grieving parents of the world who have either lost their own
children or who are unable to bear any children. In short, a child who neither eats nor sleeps nor has any normal bodily functions
but in all other matters will be just like a living, breathing child. Except that this child also will neither grow in physical
stature nor in personality nor in age nor will it exhibit any of the behavioral problems of normal youth.
(Left unexplained is the power source for all of the activities of this
"pseudo-child", which the movie suggests as being nearly infinite in duration. This also brings up the ancillary
problem, touched on during the movie from the robotic point of view, as to what happens when the "parents" are 75
years old and they still have to cope with a needy robotic child demanding their love and attention.)
Twenty months later this perfect little robot, David, BRILLIANTLY portrayed by Haley Joel Osment, who I feel was cheated
out of an Oscar win for his supporting role in the movie "The Sixth Sense", has been created and the search is on
for a company employee who is suffering the loss of their own children.
The employee best suited for this pseudo-parenting experiment is
found to be Henry Swinton (Sam Robards) and his wife Monica (Frances O'Connor), who are are first seen visiting their
young son frozen in a cryogenic tube until a cure for his disease can be discovered. Monica softly and lovingly reads to her
icily lifeless son through speakers gently placed on the outer wall of the tube.
Henry later surprises his wife by bringing home the little android "David." Monica has been in a state of emotional
grief for some time and her husband hopes that this gift will help her get over the emotional burden of worrying about the
sad fate of their own son.
This gift comes with a caveat, however, as whenever the parents decide to keep the young android and wish to bond with
him, they must then recite a code that activates a chip, creating a special desire on the part of the mecha to love and be
loved in turn. This robotic "imprinting" cannot be undone so great care is advised in making sure that the parents
are themselves capable of loving the little childlike robot in return.
This is the cold emotional heart of the Kubrickian hypothesis which is the question as to whether or not it is possible
to create an object with so many human qualities as to inspire a bond of love between the human creator and the animated object
created.
This object does not know that he is not human, just that he loves as a human and equally needs his love to be reciprocated
by the humans while they for their part know for certainty that he is not human and this raises the existential question as
to whether or not they can rise above that certainty and still love him as if he were a real human.
Henry and Monica begin to bond with their new charge, even going so far as to give him their son's robotic "Ewokian"
teddy bear named Teddy. Monica finally lovingly accepts David so she then starts to read the imprinting code to him so that
his little cells will start exhibiting his love and his need for love. As soon as the code is completed David instantly stops
calling her by her formal name, "Monica", and switches to the more childlike and supplicative term, "Mommy."
My one complaint about this first part of the movie is that I did not feel that this bonding process was convincingly
played out. Monica's doubts and reservations, not to mention her emotional ordeal at having her own son cryogenically frozen,
is much more convincing than her welcoming this new mecha son into her home and into her maternal heart. I would much rather
have had more time spent in this first part of the movie delving more deeply into the psychological complexities of this "relationship"
than was wasted at the end of the movie trying to recreate what wasn't there.
Unfortunately, as luck would have it and almost immediately after the imprinting code has irreversibly been recited, the
unlikely happens with her real son waking up out of his cryogenic slumber and coming home, apparently none the worse for the
experience except for his having support braces for the lower part of his body.
Needless to say, he does not take kindly to this familial interloper and does what comes natural to all children of that
age, which is to act in a passive-aggressive manner towards David. In addition he makes several subtle suggestions for David
to carry out that, while innocent in their appearance, he himself fully understands that they will have a disastrous outcome
and might result in the wilting of his mother's loyalty for David.
He is successful in his efforts and his mother descends into another emotional hell, the only solution for which will
be for her to abandon David for she loves him too much to send him back to the factory to be destroyed.
So David is dumped into a dark, dreary forest at some distance from his home and left to his own devices and the second
Kubrickian part of "A.I." begins as David ends up with other abandoned mechas, incomplete mechas, and mechas on
the lamb like "Gigolo Joe" (Jude Law, in another wonderful performance), a male gigolo manufactured specifically
to pleasure the women in this era of apparent widespread male impotence.
Like all children who remember with great pleasure the joy of maternal love when it comes to time for bedtime stories,
little David has set out for himself a personal quest for the Blue Fairy in the fairy tale Pinocchio, whom he is convinced
will give him a heart (that is, make him a human) so that his "mother", Monica, will love him again. His plans go
awry, however, when he and Gigolo Joe and the other mechas are captured like wild animals and endure a nightmarish caged ride
to a WWE-style arena where redneck-type Orgas cheer on the sadistic destruction of the hapless mechas.
There is a very real fear on the part of the Orgas that the Mechas might actually end up inheriting the earth. And why
not? According to the logic put forth in the movie they seem to be able to run forever, have no nutritional needs, do not
age, and are not susceptible to any of the diseases that plague us Orgas. This dark Kubrickian hypothesis is only lightly
examined during the course of "A.I.", and I, for one, would have been much more interested in seeing this hypothesis
"fleshed out" (pun intended!).
David with his beloved Teddy escape with Gigolo Joe to a "Rouge City," an orgiastic pleasure center that would
put Las Vegas to shame. This strange city in the sky, however, does have an animated "Dr. Know It All" who just
may have the answer as to where the Blue Fairy may be located. Ah, yes, he says, the Blue fairy can be found at the building
where lions weep.
And so the three androids head off in their pirated police helicopter for the desolation of the flooded New York City
with barely the arms of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the ocean. The building with the weeping lion fountains, looking
surprisingly like something at the Rockefeller Center, is found and the helicopter flies into an interior landing pad midway
up the building's non-flooded side. Surprisingly enough, they find not the Blue Fairy but Dr. Hobby, who is thrilled to have
his first loving mecha home once again as he had hoped that his programming would lead David back here as it has.
I don't want to give away the rest of the movie, but there is some violence in this scene that is shocking not because
it is violent but because it is so unexpected. And then Dr. Hobby not only ignores this violence by not commenting on it but
also goes on to do something that, while necessary to set up the structure for the rest of the movie, is so illogical to me
as to be incredibly unsatisfying.
Since Dr. Hobby doesn't explain either this incident or his subsequent actions and since the robots cannot comprehend
the answers that we viewers search for, then we are all left without a logical explanation for the new course the movie takes.
This dissatisfaction is further compounded by the ending of the movie which I have complained about before. It is here
that Spielberg should have taken a different fork in the plot road and gone for a braver, darker, more coldly intellectual
and analytical ending to what could have been a truly great movie. In this case, it is truly unfortunate that there will be
no second chances for this "cinematic mecha" with a little too much Spielbergian heart and not enough Kubrickian
intellect.
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